Carmel council may juggle its to-do list for 2014

CARMEL &GT;&GT; The Carmel City Council may move some items on this year's to-do list back from the front burner.

At a special meeting Monday, the council is scheduled take a special look at its 10-item roster of "key initiatives" for 2014.

Mayor Jason Burnett said it's an ambitious set of tasks, and one that may need to be scaled back in some areas. "Which of those key initiatives are ones that can wait?" he said this week.

The 10 tasks identified by the council in January are: water, parking management, shoreline and forest management, trails, information technology, a facilities use plan, Sunset Center, Forest Theater, beautification and disposition of the Flanders Mansion.

The special meeting is at 5:30 p.m. Monday after a closed session. No backup material was available for the session.

Burnett said while the council will have the final say, he would like to see "a midyear recalibration" of the job list. "It's too much at this point," he said.

Other issues have arisen demanding a lot of city resources, he said. They include a March explosion that destroyed a home during a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. pipeline repair project, and the April emergency closure of the Forest Theater for safety reasons. Burnett said the farmers market has also taken a lot of staff attention.

Trimming the agenda could help the staff do a better job, he said. "An appropriate workload" could help avoid mistakes like the July issuance of business license tax bills that contained an erroneous 3 percent increase, he said.

"You don't want to make mistakes like that," Burnett said. "That's not to excuse it, but we shouldn't be making mistakes like that.

"As a responsible governing body," he said, "it's our responsibility to calibrate what we want to achieve with what we can achieve."